Melissa McCarthy lost a $9,000 wig on a jet ski while filming ‘Tammy’

Imagine losing something worth $9,000. Probably not that easy to replace, right? That’s exactly what actress Melissa McCarthy experienced while filming a jet ski scene on the set of Tammy.

“We were just doing a test,” McCarthy said on Chelsea Lately Wednesday. “It’s hard to shoot on water because everything’s moving…so we did a test and I’m like, ‘Isn’t it a great idea if I’m in full wig and costume? Because if we shoot some stuff, maybe it’s usable.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m kind of amazing at this,’ because I’m really a couple steps ahead. I don’t really know how to ride a jet ski—I’ve never been on one before.”

She received some instructions on how to operate the machine from the film crew’s stunt coordinator.

“All I heard was ‘faster’ and ‘dig in,” she added. “So I literally cranked it up. I’m going like 45 miles per hour, thinking, ‘Oh, god, I’m not skilled. I shouldn’t be doing this. But the camera’s getting it, so maybe it’ll look good and we’re ahead of schedule.’ I’m like, ‘Now I’ll dig in.’ And I flipped that thing at 45 miles an hour.”

Although she wasn’t injured, she was missing a particularly valuable part of her outfit.

“I didn’t know if I was up or down and I thought, ‘Holy god, I’ve got that wig on.’ We don’t have a huge budget and a wig’s like $9,000… I felt for the wig, which, by the way, had like 35 pins in it — you couldn’t rip it off my head — gone,” McCarthy recalled.

Later, McCarthy learned that the cameras weren’t turned on, meaning movie audiences will never have the chance to see her hilariously flip a jet ski.